Oct 18 1973
From The Space Library
NASA announced plans to study Comet Kohoutek with an exten-sive array of electronic eyes. The comet, now some 400 million km (250 million mi) from the sun, was expected to be visible in the Northern Hemisphere around Christmas time. It was expected to be as bright as a full moon and to be larger than Halley's Comet, which had appeared last in 1910. NASA scientists would use optical telescopes, radiotelescopes, and radar to study Kohoutek in visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light from the ground and a high-altitude C-141 aircraft, as well as satellites, sounding rockets, and Skylab 4 telescopes and cameras-to learn more about whether planets were remnants of the formation of the solar sys-tem or interstellar matter captured by the sun. Scientists would try to determine possible existence of a solid comet nucleus. Kohoutek was be-lieved to have a 20- to 30-km (12- to 19-mi) nucleus with a probable head diameter of 96 000 km (60 000 mi). (NASA Release 73-207)
Dr. Fred L. Whipple, Harvard Univ. astronomer and former Director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, received the Smithsonian Institution's Henry Medal during Cambridge, Mass., ceremonies honor-ing his July retirement from the Observatory. Dr. Whipple was cited for his leadership of the Observatory from the early days of the national space program to the present and for his contributions to man's under-standing of the solar system. (Smithsonian Torch, 11/73, 4)
Col. Berra Balchen (uSAF, Ret.), aviator and explorer who was chief pilot on Adm. Richard E. Byrd's first South Pole flight in 1929, died in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., at age 74. From 1933 to 1935 Balchen had been chief pilot of the Ellsworth Antarctic Expedition and in 1935 to 1940 chief of inspection for Norwegian Airlines. He was President of Norwegian Air-lines in 1946 when it became the parent company of Scandinavian Air-lines System. In 1948 Col. Balchen was recalled to active duty in the Air Force and named commanding officer of the 10th Rescue Squadron at Fort Richardson, Alaska. (NYT, 10/19/73, 42)
Dr. Frank T. McClure, Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Univ. Ap-plied Physics Laboratory, died in Baltimore, Md., following a heart attack. He was internationally known as an authority on combustion, rockets, and guided missile technology and was inventor of the Navy satellite doppler navigation system. For this invention he had received NASA'S first inventions award in 1961. (W Post, 10/19/73, C11)
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